Individuals and businesses are becoming increasingly reliant on communication networks to send and receive information. For example, individuals may utilize communication networks for voice communications, research, and entertainment, and organizations typically require the use of high speed data networks such as the Internet for conducting critical business transactions. Since users of communication networks have become dependent on these information services, communication service providers have an interest in ensuring customer satisfaction by providing an optimal speed of data transmissions within the network.
One manner of ensuring communication network transmission speed is to identify and determine network elements that are causing a high latency within the network. For example, a communication network typically includes various nodes, systems, and other network elements in the communication path between one communication device and another. At certain times, some of these network elements may be slow to respond to a network request, or, in a worst-case scenario, completely unresponsive. Therefore, a communication service provider must ensure that a particular network element is not exhibiting a high degree of latency.